Second Wind
by FlamingHelmet
Summary: "And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you." ― Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars
1. Chapter 1 – King and Lionheart

"I have no change for it all, beautiful girl."

The days began like any other for her. She had to wake up because of her screaming digital alarm clock, had to take a cold shower to finally stop dozing off, had to eat some over-toasted toast... Sometimes she had to go to meetings of their heads of state to discuss some little detail about her economic policies, and make a mean comment about the new neighborhood in the Eurozone from time to time.

Once a month, she visited her friends in small parties. There was no United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany... Hungary. Only Alfred, Arthur, Feliciano, Lovino, Ludwig.

Elizaveta.

She remembered how Ludwig would always sit between two chairs facing another one. Today, he sits with Feliciano to his left side, facing Kiku. But the chair to his right is now empty. Permanently empty.

There were those who thought the chair was a nuisance , an obstruction of passage for others. However, others looked at the old wooden seat with affection. With longing.

However, regardless of the emptyiness of some secret salon's chair, life went on. It had to continue.

Time couldn't stop. Not even for the so called immortals.

The years have flown beyond the horizon, and three years have passed. Three years without Gilbert Beilschmidt.

The albino was the only one who knew when he was going to be gone, but said nothing to the others. And alone, he left. He left no body, no tears, left no letters. Only the longing in the hearts and memories of those who knew him.

There was no funeral. It was the only request that Gilbert would have made before vanishing. Whether it was a joke or not, his wish was respected.

"You can't prepare a funeral for someone who's not supposed to die, right?"

"People like me do not die. We just fly away."

He was brave. How could he speak such thing in such a sincere way without crying she never knew.

In a Winter day, Elizaveta ended up in Leipzig. The air of the city reminded her of her friend, throughout its history as a great venue to the German intelligentsia, the European music and to decisive battles.

She smiled. He was too fond of that city. When the manifestaion outbreaks began chanting their desire for freedom and the end of the Cold War in increasingly powerful voices, growing even more to resemble roars, Gilbert was there. Weak, hungry, tired. Maybe he had no strength to lift a sword, but his spirit burned like the eternal flames of the phoenix. His energy was contagious to his people.

He no longer lived to show he was strong and could subordinate all to his orders as in his golden age. He lived to destroy the fruit of what he started in the late nineteenth century, the fruit of his revenge and his hunger for power. He lived to show that there was no such things as West or East, but a world without borders, without walls. Without the Cold War.

An air of freedom changed the course of snowflakes that were falling on the Hungarian. The wind deceived her, pretending to be a breath from the Prussian. The nostalgia made her paranoid. At night in her hotel room, she swore she could hear him playing the flute. She swore she could see him wandering the beautiful streets of Leipzig.

It was late afternoon when she decided to look at those old buildings again and, from afar, she heard the melody of that flute. The piper was a skilled man, he had fast fingers that quickly moved from note to note. It was almost like a bird that was born to sing.

She followed the sound of the music and found herself at a busy square. But people passed by and hardly noticed the flutist performing there. Maybe he had been there for some time. Still, she approached him – a man covered in only a thin jacket and an old cap – and threw him ten euros.

Immediately, he stopped playing and looked at the strange paper displayed among mere pennies in the little box that he probably used to keep his flute. He took off his sunglasses and continued to stare at the ten euro bill as if not believing in what had just happened. His eyes traveled from the feet of Elizaveta to her green eyes.

He was a moderately tall man. Slim. His pants seemed old and patched; clearly a beggar. But his eyes... They were the eyes of an old friend.

He quickly put the flute in his pant's pocket and took the bill. "I have no change for it all, beautiful girl." the strange piper commented, handing it back to the Hungarian who could not react. " Unless you're really desperate to hear a specific song."

"Gilbert...? "


	2. Chapter 2 – Bánat Utca

"Gilbert?"

"Guess so." Amidst the bustling German city's square, the two faced each other, analyzing each other in every possible way. She tried to find any flaw that desclassificasse as the defunct nation. And he tried to remember the woman who knew him somehow. "But if you insist..."

What were the chances of her finding a man identical in appearance, mannerisms and even in voice to Gilbert? That simple shrug. The military stance, inflated chest in pride. Red, piercing and challenging eyes. "You don't know your own name?"

"I do not remember it. I woke up from a coma, apparently." The albino gave her a half smirk of indifference. "Doctors spent two weeks asking me if I remembered bing in some nasty accident, some type of aggression that I may have suffered before becoming unconscious."

Could he had been resurrected? Could this kind of thing happen to dissolved nations? Was that man even Gilbert Beilschmidt? "What a story, huh?" She smiled, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Maybe it was just a coincidence. "Excuse me. Maybe I mistook you for... someone else."

"I find it hard to believe. How many albino Germans do you know, young lady?" He laughed that old genuine laugh .

"Fair enough." She accompanied him on her own shy laugh.

"But say, do you still want to request your song or did you just give me ten euros out of pity?"

Truth. She didn't even know why she had just given that money to the strange beggar. He was really talented with the flute, and also physically unique and strangely familiar in all his aspects. "Play your favorite one."

"That's some bland request. C'mon, challenge me. You pay, you choose." The piper put his hands on his waist in the very same way a seven year old would do. "Let's do the following. I'll try to guess a song you might like or not. If I get it right, you pay me a night's stay in a hostel, deal?"

A hostel? So he really had no place to live? Despite the feeling of pity, she accepted the challenge. "Deal. Do your best."

Without hesitation, "Gilbert" took the instrument to his mouth and played it. It was a song she knew for sure, but it was not one she would have expected to hear played on a flute, at a square of some German city. The letter began to escape her lips, molded into a smile of familiarity.

_Utca, utca, bánat utca  
__Bánatkővel van kirakva  
__Azt is tudom, hogy ki rakta,  
__Hogy én járjak sírva rajta__._

Some people threw him the last coins of the day in the simple box on the floor, to the sound of a foreign song, which soon came to an end just like the afternoon. When he finish it, the piper bowed and took the money, putting it in his pocket and putting the flute away after disassembling it. "I liked you, girl."

"How did you know...?" She asked him, handing him the money for one night in a nice hostel. "I do not think a song about sad streets match my face that perfectly."

"At the corner over there," pointed it with his finger "there is a simple bar. Meet me there in an hour and a half, will you?" And just left the square.

The Hungarian stood there, still not knowing what to do, under the orange sky of half past five's evening.

The clink of the coins still clanked toward some hostel in Leipzig when her legs decided to take her back to her hotel.


	3. Chapter 3 – I Want to Know

**Author's**** Notes: **Hey there, folks! I do believe this is my first time making an AN. Anyways, I'm here to thank for the"Favourites" and "Follows" I've received in "Second Wind". Apart from that, I also made this chapter longer as per request of some people.

And, finally, I highly suggest you to read the chapter with this song here: watch?v=GVoXNS_Ht6c Kind of helped me get to the feelings and stuff.

* * *

Childhood friends. Rivals. Deadly enemies. Acquaintances indifferent to each other. Friends again.

… Distant, in the end.

He was gone without any kind of announcement, like a book without an epilogue to its end. He avoided everyone before vanishing. No one saw him perishing; no one knew if there was pain, regret or fear in his departing. He didn't deserve the solitude of his last days.

Gilbert never deserved the solitude he created for himself. Why did he shut himself in that shell of apparent well-being and self-control when she told him that he could always trust her?

_"So… Friends, then?"_

The voice of the boy she met in the age of the Crusades, amid so much blood, so much misery. He wasn't exact a blessing… But, perhaps, a small opportunity for her to be and feel like a child in such an "adult" war.

_"The pontiff is looking for me. Let's run to the forest!" _They spent whole afternoons playing among the bushes and under the apple trees, pointing at clouds and mimicking birds in times of peace. When they were enemies in the battlefield, they didn't think of it as a mere game.

_"I think… this might be a goodbye."_

People change.

There were things she preferred to forget. And others to which she desperately wanted to hold close.

_"Friends forever!"_

_ "You fight well!"_

_ "I won't forget you."_

_ "Your eyes… are beautiful."_

_ "That dress looks good on you."_

_ "Open your eyes."_

"Hey! Are you okay?" She slowly opened her eyes to find his, as red as blood. He waved his hand in front of her.

"Oh, I… I am. I just feel sleepy, that's all." She murmured, pretending to rub the sleep away from her eyes. They were wet.

"You were crying."

"I wasn't." Elizaveta tried to delude him, convincing the stranger of the opposite.

He sat on the chair across her. "Whether you are telling me the truth or not, it doesn't really matter." He rose his hand, signing to the waiter, that returned him a nod from afar. "The eyes are the window to one's soul. And sometimes we let our feelings pour through them, which isn't something bad, believe me." He carelessly leaned on his chair. "Important thing is not letting this kind of thing build up inside you. Just put all of your distress out, and you'll finally feel your heart beat lighter."

"Even if that distress is someone… _something_ I love?"

"It'll all depend on how much you love it." Silence. The waiter came to take their orders before the two stranger fall in an awkward situation. "For how long is he gone now?" The albino asked her.

"He…?"

"You know who." He opened the beer bottle in front of him, offering her a sip of it before she explained it.

"It was… _He_ was a childhood friend. We had some falling out and comebacks in our friendship, but we were friends, for sure. At least for me." She accepted his beer. "It had been a very long while since we had last talked to each other when he vanished like that. What I feel is a non-justified fault of mine. I don't really know if it's my fault at all, but I can't but feel guilty for it."

"Already in debt with the dead, eh?" He gave her a discrete laugh. "Look, it's over. He isn't here anymore and, unfortunately, apologizing won't bring him back." He added, gently reaching for his bottle. "Honestly, I think you should just… keep going. Mourning is not something I'd do for a dead friend. The guy would want me to keep on living for him, as if I were to take him as a memory and not as a burden, y'know?" Elizaveta kept her eyes locked on his. Was it really truth? "Well, at least I would hate it if I was to be like an anchor to people once I'd be gone." He observed the liquid move inside the bottle when he returned to look at her. "But the dead can't think."

It was a quite pleasant night. The "Gilbert" apologized for not having enough money to pay her a dinner in an actual restaurant. She gave him the money she promised for his hostel and they both bid a simple goodbye. She would meet him again in the next afternoon, in the same place.

When she left the bar – so heart-warming, welcoming, _human_ – she felt the cold wind cut through her flesh, slowly devouring her away. The outside world was cold and lonesome.

_"The human being is fragile. That's what I am: just a sheep playing the role of the wolf among the lions." _His words were harsh. Almost like a poetry, but without the colours, the furore, the folly of its genre. A man devoid of passions, of dreams. A body without a soul, only waiting for the expiration date of his pod.

Back to the hotel, she took her clothes off and entered the tub in her bathroom. It had been a night of rediscoveries. She was supposed to be happy. Then why did that pure smile hurt her heart so much? His bitter taste persisted in her mouth, in her heart; like a puddle of acid that slowly, yet gently took her to a world of pain and solitude of a fallen soldier, of an angel who lost his way. Gilbert was the snake that bit her bosom and poisoned her body with that guilty.

If only she had chosen to ignore him, to ignore the wound in her chest… But he was such a good actor, playing the victim… Dying like a martyr, away from everyone's eyes. A scoundrel, cornered by his own decisions by his deathbed.

"I will never succumb to you again, Gilbert." She whispered to herself.

The beginning of their friendship was perhaps that one choice she would regret throughout her limited eternity. Who would know that that idiot boy would've become her rival?

The time passed and the reality began to show its cruel and stern side. Pain changes people. War consumes and destroy those who fight it. The two friends were not an exception, as the ages were able to show.

The scar of the sword still hurt her shoulder, dangerously close to her neck. That same scar insisted on inflaming and causing her pains, both metaphorical and literal. The first kiss of the viper.

_"I do believe this is a war declaration."_

_ "I thought I was clear in my message. But I can carve it in your body if you wish… woman." The blade kept digging deeper into the smooth skin of that spot. The metal licked her blood, that drained under the already destroyed armour. The white-haired knight brought the blade to his mouth, tasting it. "I won't forget your taste, barbarian."_

He was a monster. And how could she had even loved such a man even for a few hours?

No. No! She had never loved him as anything more than a friend. A stranger that came to know her too well.

She caressed the thick scar. Those were memories she would rather forget. Memories that she wished they had died with Gilbert and had been buried under six feet of dirt and oblivion.

And the time didn't slow down it gallop. Her strength would go with the unstoppable tick-tock of the clocks and with the fall of the leaves of Fall, right before the Winter.

Winter… She recalled it well: The longest Winter in her life.

It was the 70's in the Soviet Union. She was weak from her many failed riots and protests, from such repressions, from the many kicks to her ribcage that never broke, only hurt. As in the myth of Prometheus. Even though it hurt, she knew that the sun would rise for her in the next day; that she would live to see the fall of the wall.

He wouldn't.

The cold wouldn't return him that frostbitten bit of ear. His body wouldn't make the internal bleeding stop. His dislocated arm wouldn't fix itself. Not anymore. He wouldn't go back to be Prussia again. He deserved it. He was harvesting the fruits of the trees he had planted in the past.

Gilbert deserved death. He knew that… And that's why he only crawled away from the eyes of people with his head down to the ground in reverence to all of those who could still dream of a tomorrow without East or West, without the shame of their pasts, without regrets.

In a Winter day, Elizaveta ended up in Leipzig. The air of the city reminded her of the one who was sentenced to death, throughout its history as a great venue to the German intelligentsia, the European music and to decisive battles.

She smiled. He was too fond of that city. Maybe he'd be there to die where it once was his capital. She kept walking the empty and already dark streets, when she heard barks. She hid herself. Maybe the soldiers were patrolling the area, approaching anyone that was walking alone there.

She searched uniformed men, big dogs in collars… But only found the last of the Prussians fighting for a trash can with two street dogs. Nothing more distinguished him from the beasts that roamed the streets like ghosts.

He was weak. He had to play dead so the dogs would leave him alone.

_Until when do you want to fight. Just die in some corner and stop._

He faltered, but tried to stand up.

_ Stop trying._

He faltered one last time, falling over his hands and knees. The square was deserted and it seemed as if the two were the only existing beings there. His already frostbitten hands couldn't manage to help him stay still like that. Yet, he kept trying.

"Please, just die already!" Her voice echoed in the void. She had so much hatred for that man. She wanted to shred him to pieces just like the dogs almost did to him. She wanted to kick him, kill him in that very moment. She wanted to crush him, diminish him, humiliate him like he had always done to her.

The Hungarian approached him her heavy heart telling her to kick him to the death. Gilbert remained in his place, hands and knees on the ground, just waiting for the guillotine that would finally separate his head from his body.

"Lift that filthy head of yours." She was at least waiting for a mocking glance over her from him, but he remained still facing the ground. He never lowered his head to anyone. What was the weight of the shame that finally made him kneel in defeat?

She kicked him.

Nothing. He still tried to stand up even after being kicked down.

"Stop standing up!" She screamed at him. "Damn you, stop trying!"

And kick after kick she continued to try to train him to stay on the ground, teaching him to die little by little.

"Stop suffering and just die!"

However, she wasn't kicking him because of her hatred anymore, but because she wanted to end his suffering. Tears made their way down from her beautiful peridot-green eyes.

_"Your eyes… are beautiful." The young albino told her, pointing at the girl's face._

The man in the ground tried to protect himself, when he grabbed her dress.

_"That dress looks good on you." He murmured to his side, trying to avoid eye contact._

Each blow was a memory being shredded, destroyed, thrown to the gale to be forgot. The square's floor was stained in red next to the fallen former nation. The snow and the tears fell as if trying to cover the blood, as if trying to wash it from the stone tiles that drank it.

She didn't hate him. She couldn't hate him. Elizaveta knelt before him, nurturing him in her arms as a mother would do to her son.

Gilbert's suffering wouldn't wash his sins. He wouldn't depart from Earth as a messiah for that.

Elizaveta turned the face of the fallen man to herself. She mentally asked him to look at her. And so he did. She was crying. He tried to fake a smile. Two broken hearts warmed each other in that way: wordlessly, soundlessly. Only eye contact and simple exchanges of touches to each other's faces.

_"Men are born from suffering."_

Elizaveta continued to hold him like that, sheltering from pain and harm, from any evil that could scare him. He trembled in her arms like an abandoned puppy. She didn't need to apologize. The albino tried to hold her, shyly. He wanted to stay like that until dawn.

But she couldn't. The Hungarian slowly let go of him, reluctantly. Red eyes begged her to come back.

"I can't go back. And so can't you." She whispered at his ear. "We can only walk towards the horizon." She took the small golden ring from her finger and put it in Gilbert's. "Promise me you'll live to find me again."

The man's arm reached her before she could stand up. A smile. Two smiles.

A kiss.

And a goodbye.

* * *

**Author's Notes: **Just leaving this note here. If you pay close attention to details, you'll notice that there's this one paragraph that is extremely similar to one in Chapter 1; and that there are some phrases that appear in the very beginning of this chapter and that are later put in the end.

So… Yeah, that's it. I hope you've enjoyed the chapter. "Second Wind" is supposed to have two or three more chapters before the end. But I'm getting very busy with my academic life, and I still haven't even written Chapter 4 in Portuguese. It might take a while until I'm able to post it here. I apologize for the inconvenience.


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